Picture this: a computer sitting in a lab, essentially “thinking up” brand new forms of life from scratch. That’s exactly what just happened at Stanford and the Arc Institute, where researchers used ...

Computer hackers could create malicious software that crosses the line from technology to biology, crafting viruses that could spread dangerous epidemics, researchers said at Black Hat Europe. “We are ...

When mathematicians Leland McInnes and John Healy walked into their work’s annual “Big Dig” — a sort of classified hackathon for Canada’s version of the National Security Agency — in 2017, they were ...

After all the controversy over the past few years about gain-of-function research on viruses, especially the Covid-19 virus, I thought this kind of work was on hold, at least in the U.S. Indeed, the ...

A growing number of scientists are reconsidering the dangers of prospecting for unknown viruses and conducting other high-stakes work with pathogens (Photo illustration by Max-o-matic for The ...

Research at Boston University that involved testing a lab-made hybrid version of the SARS-CoV-2 virus is garnering heated headlines alleging the scientists involved could have unleashed a new pathogen ...